Santa Rosa native returns to share from her lauded memoir of love and loss

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Thursday will be a homecoming of sorts for Genevieve “Gwen” Kingston.

The Santa Rosa native, who now resides in Brooklyn, New York, where she is an actor and playwright, will be at Copperfield’s Books in Montgomery Village at 7 p.m. to share the story of her moving and wildly popular 2024 memoir “Did I Ever Tell You?”

It is, in short, a story about Kingston and her mother, Kristina Mailliard, who was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer when Kingston was just three. Kingston, 36, spins a beautiful and poignant story of living through her mother’s illness, witnessing her death and then, with the help of a large box of letters, gifts and messages from her mom, finding her way through all of the parts of life for which her mom would not physically be a part of.

Each trinket, each letter had an express purpose. Maillard left gifts to mark birthdays, but also Kingston’s first period, the day she got her driver’s license, her high school graduation.

Kingston paints funny scenes of her mom in costume for over-the-top birthday parties, after which decorations became permanent fixtures around the house. She also shares moments of her young self being anxious about going to school or spending the night at a friend’s out of fear of what she may be missing at home or what might have changed upon her return.

And she writes of feeling a fatigue that few might ever understand — being a young girl, watching her mother fight for every moment while acknowledging the toll such a fight takes on everyone in that orbit.

“I wanted time to waste, time to forget that our life together had any end at all,” she writes. “We found we couldn’t sustain the urgency with which we’d been living our lives. It was exhausting, spending every moment together, living every day to the fullest.”

Mailliard died in the family’s Santa Rosa home in 2001 — 10 days before Kingston’s 12th birthday, a birthday she shared with her mom.

In a 2024 interview with The Press Democrat, Kingston described the book as a love letter to her mom — a written response to all that her mom gave her in life, but also in the trinkets and messages she left for her in death.

Kingston’s story, which she first put out into the world in a highly praised essay “She Put Her Unspent Love in a Cardboard Box,” that appeared in the Modern Love column in the New York Times in 2021, evolved into her acclaimed book. Oprah Winfrey called it “one of the most anticipated books of 2024.”

“At times devastating, at other times funny…this book will give you a long, cathartic cry,” read one of the many positive reviews. “An extraordinary testament to the power of love over death,” read another. “This book is so full of hard-won wisdom and surprising insight into the challenges of joy of living every day…” Good Morning America called it “unforgettable.”

Kingston, who graduated from Santa Rosa High in 2007 before graduating from UC Berkeley and then earning an MFA in acting from Brown University, weaves a love letter, as well, to her older brother, Jamie; her late father, Peter, who died in 2011; and the circle of her mother’s friends and relatives that took Kingston in, in a way, and not only offered guidance and care but also insight into the woman Mailliard was beyond motherhood.

Kingston’s story continues after her mom’s death, but her mother is never far from the story.

Though filled with heartbreak, the throughline of the story is less about loss than about love — in all of its mysterious forms. It’s also a celebration, of her mom, of her family, of her circle of friends, of her hometown.

And that part is what makes Thursday night’s conversation at Copperfield’s something special. The room will likely be filled with people who knew Maillard, who know Kingston, and who may shared some small piece of this story.

It is a homecoming celebration not to be missed.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.